To be a good individual you must think of yourself first.
When people join a team they keep this mind set. Most people serve themselves in the team first. What do I stand to gain? How can I can I win? Then, if it's not too inconvenient, they'll think of helping their fellow team mates. Finally, they'll consider the mission. This is why most teams don't work, because the mission is the last thing to be considered. Just apply this mentality to a sports team and think about if they'd win.
When you join a team you must be unified by a mission or sense of purpose. Before you become part of a team you should consider if that mission serves you. Do you believe in it? Will it make you better off? You have to do this because another sure way for this not to work is if you're on a team where serving its mission first doesn't ultimately serve you.
Even if you want to be part of a team and the mission is what you want, however, you still might not know how to have a good team. Some of the main concerns are: 1) will my team mates serve the mission first, 2) what if I'm not good enough on the team, 3) what if I get obligated to do something I can't do, and 4) what about bad days
Knowing the answers to these is knowing the basics of team building, and I'll address each in turn in parts 2 to 5.
Saturday, 26 June 2010
Wednesday, 23 June 2010
The shorthand of success
1) Take it slow. You will get there quicker
2) Be kinder to yourself
3) Finish things
2) Be kinder to yourself
3) Finish things
How TA can solve the problem: 'I'm not getting what I want. I have no idea what to do'
'I'm not getting what I want. I have no idea what to do.'
In NLP there's this theory called 'transactional analysis'*, or TA, which is in essence about good communication and how to be flexible with communication. At first it sounded like hot air to me, but it's not.
You have three states: child, adult, and parent. For simplicity, I'll focus on the first two for now.
CHILD
'Children' don't care about the rules. In a social situation they're free to be creative. They'll make jokes. They won't worry about what they should do or how they're perceived. But they also can get stuck without guidelines, or can sometimes be hurtful, or neglectful of consequences.
'I'm not getting what I want. I have no idea what to do,' is a child's problem. A lot of sadness is about being in a child state. Say Joe wants somebody romantically, but the feelings aren't reciprocated. In a child state Joe will mentally stomp his feet and sulk. 'It's not fair! I don't know what to do.'
Being in a child state is about acting on impluses, which is great for the fast thinking needed to be funny or creative, or even just having good ideas on what we want to do, but when those impluses aren't sated, the child doesn't know what to do.
ADULTS
'Adults' ask themselves who, what, when, where and how. If Joe was in an adult state about his unrequited love, he might ask himself, 'what can I do about this problem?' 'How can I move past this?' Or a really adult question, 'Am I interested in her enough to change who I am to be more in line with what she's looking for? Or would I rather stay as I am and find somebody else?'
An adult state is great for keeping level. It's the exact oppose of the child state in many ways. An adult looks for good guidelines. However, as a consequence, being an adult doesn't lend itself to being entertaining or spontaneous. This is its weakness.
HOW TO USE THE THEORY
When thinking about psychology profiling people want to know which thing on the list they are. TA isn't like that. We all shift between the three states all the time. The skill is in knowing when to shift and problems arise for us when we don't shift optimally.
Child and adult compliment each others strengths. If we go into a situation in a child state, we can perform highly. When something goes wrong and we don't get what we want, however, rather than get stuck we can shift to an adult state.
IMPLIMENTING THE THEORY
Knowing about the states explicitly is enough to start making progress.
We can know when we go into the situation, we shouldn't, as many of us do, be looking for the guidelines, or the rules of the social situation.
Have you ever done that thing we all do at times where you're with people and you're just not as funny as you know you can be and its because you're trying to work out, sometimes not explicitly, 'would this be funny to them?' Or 'oh, they keep joking about X, is that what I have to make jokes about?'
This is the time to be in a child state. Abandon the rules and go with your impulses on what's funny. You can help yourself get into this state by noticing when you're caring about finding 'the rules' when you shouldn't be and asking yourself 'who's making this important to me?' The answer will always be you, it can't be another answer.
If you just used the child state, however, of course if something goes wrong -- maybe you offend somebody or you're not getting any laughs -- in a child state you will panic and go back to 'I'm not getting what I want, what should I do?' Instead, shift to being an adult. Again, adults ask questions. 'How can I help them not be offended?' 'What do they need?' and so on.
It'll take practice.
*TA comes from psychology, but I think NLP deserves all the credit for seeing the utility of the theory.
In NLP there's this theory called 'transactional analysis'*, or TA, which is in essence about good communication and how to be flexible with communication. At first it sounded like hot air to me, but it's not.
You have three states: child, adult, and parent. For simplicity, I'll focus on the first two for now.
CHILD
'Children' don't care about the rules. In a social situation they're free to be creative. They'll make jokes. They won't worry about what they should do or how they're perceived. But they also can get stuck without guidelines, or can sometimes be hurtful, or neglectful of consequences.
'I'm not getting what I want. I have no idea what to do,' is a child's problem. A lot of sadness is about being in a child state. Say Joe wants somebody romantically, but the feelings aren't reciprocated. In a child state Joe will mentally stomp his feet and sulk. 'It's not fair! I don't know what to do.'
Being in a child state is about acting on impluses, which is great for the fast thinking needed to be funny or creative, or even just having good ideas on what we want to do, but when those impluses aren't sated, the child doesn't know what to do.
ADULTS
'Adults' ask themselves who, what, when, where and how. If Joe was in an adult state about his unrequited love, he might ask himself, 'what can I do about this problem?' 'How can I move past this?' Or a really adult question, 'Am I interested in her enough to change who I am to be more in line with what she's looking for? Or would I rather stay as I am and find somebody else?'
An adult state is great for keeping level. It's the exact oppose of the child state in many ways. An adult looks for good guidelines. However, as a consequence, being an adult doesn't lend itself to being entertaining or spontaneous. This is its weakness.
HOW TO USE THE THEORY
When thinking about psychology profiling people want to know which thing on the list they are. TA isn't like that. We all shift between the three states all the time. The skill is in knowing when to shift and problems arise for us when we don't shift optimally.
Child and adult compliment each others strengths. If we go into a situation in a child state, we can perform highly. When something goes wrong and we don't get what we want, however, rather than get stuck we can shift to an adult state.
IMPLIMENTING THE THEORY
Knowing about the states explicitly is enough to start making progress.
We can know when we go into the situation, we shouldn't, as many of us do, be looking for the guidelines, or the rules of the social situation.
Have you ever done that thing we all do at times where you're with people and you're just not as funny as you know you can be and its because you're trying to work out, sometimes not explicitly, 'would this be funny to them?' Or 'oh, they keep joking about X, is that what I have to make jokes about?'
This is the time to be in a child state. Abandon the rules and go with your impulses on what's funny. You can help yourself get into this state by noticing when you're caring about finding 'the rules' when you shouldn't be and asking yourself 'who's making this important to me?' The answer will always be you, it can't be another answer.
If you just used the child state, however, of course if something goes wrong -- maybe you offend somebody or you're not getting any laughs -- in a child state you will panic and go back to 'I'm not getting what I want, what should I do?' Instead, shift to being an adult. Again, adults ask questions. 'How can I help them not be offended?' 'What do they need?' and so on.
It'll take practice.
*TA comes from psychology, but I think NLP deserves all the credit for seeing the utility of the theory.
Saturday, 19 June 2010
If you think you can't do sales...
It's pretty common to think you aren't good at sales. What this usually means, however, is that the idea of sales scares you, or you aren't sure what you're supposed to do to make sales.
We make sales all the time, though. We make them daily in fact, sometimes hourly. They can range from getting paid for a service to just deciding what film to go see with your friends. Any time you get somebody to accept something they previously didn't, you've made a sale.
Rather than thinking 'I'm not good at sales,' then, it's better to think about times where you have made sales. Like, maybe you're really good at getting people enthusiastic about the hobbies you're enthusiastic about. Or maybe you're very good at explaining complex ideas to people.
Once you know what kind of things you've successfully sold in the past, of which there will be many, you can start to think about what skills you used. How you acted then that worked so well? How did you make those sales?
Learning more of the tricks and techniques availble to make sales is a fantastic thing to do. But the most progress you can have with sales is simply by doing more of what you're already good at.
We make sales all the time, though. We make them daily in fact, sometimes hourly. They can range from getting paid for a service to just deciding what film to go see with your friends. Any time you get somebody to accept something they previously didn't, you've made a sale.
Rather than thinking 'I'm not good at sales,' then, it's better to think about times where you have made sales. Like, maybe you're really good at getting people enthusiastic about the hobbies you're enthusiastic about. Or maybe you're very good at explaining complex ideas to people.
Once you know what kind of things you've successfully sold in the past, of which there will be many, you can start to think about what skills you used. How you acted then that worked so well? How did you make those sales?
Learning more of the tricks and techniques availble to make sales is a fantastic thing to do. But the most progress you can have with sales is simply by doing more of what you're already good at.
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